12/16/2010 @ 2:00PM

Why Women's Leadership Initiatives Fail

We all know the grim statistics. Women in C-Suites are still as rare as icicles in July. Companies often express their concern with a so-called “women’s leadership initiative.” They are often well-intentioned. So why do so many initiatives produce so few results?

They take the wrong approach. If we continue to rely on vague good intentions, meaningful change will take generations. Thirty years of social science, though, offers clear guidance on how to address the organizational issues that keep women out of leadership roles. Here are four steps to a social science-based approach:

Get serious. Too often, at the Center for WorkLife Law, we hear from women who want us to come speak to their leadership initiative, but are unable even to pay our expenses. Here’s what we say: Don’t accept an assignment unless you are given the resources you need to succeed in implementing it. That’s standard business advice, and it’s relevant here.

These women often are asked to shoulder new responsibilities on top of their existing workloads, often without a budget or administrative support. Then they find their efforts don’t count when comp time rolls around. Only about 3% of women believe that contributions to diversity are valued in remuneration, according to my recent co-authored study of women law firm partners, New Millennium, Same Glass Ceiling?

A women’s leadership initiative may well hurt women rather than help them if it requires them to spend time, with administrative support, on activities that distract them from activities the organization truly values and rewards.

Start with a simple question: Are most all your “top brass” men married to homemakers and women without children? If so, an unstated requirement for leadership is that candidates have a specific family form: breadwinners married to homemakers.

Until this changes, a proportionate number of women will never reach the C-suite–no matter what firms do. Requiring leaders to play the old-fashioned breadwinner role guarantees not only a vanishingly small percentage of women, it also ensures that the leadership will consist of people chosen based on their ability to work a certain schedule, rather than on raw talent.

What about flexible work arrangements (FWAs), or mass career customization? Neither will deliver a proportionate number of women to the top without a change in workplace norms for men.

Current norms revolve around an unspoken rule. Go-getters need “to demonstrate commitment by making work the central focus of their lives” and “manifest singular ‘devotion to work,’ unencumbered with family responsibilities,” to quote sociologists Mary Blair-Loy and Amy Wharton in “Mothers in Finance: Surviving and Thriving.”

This “work devotion” mandate requires women–but not men–to give up conventional family life if they want to reach the C-suite. The result? A flexibility stigma that affects women on FWAs, and men who try to take federally mandated parental leave means that even if companies do everything else right, they’ll see few women in the C-suite.

Tap 35 years of social science to end gender bias. Thirty-five years of research has documented, over and over and over, four basic patterns of gender bias in careers that are, both historically and demographically, male.

–Prove it again! While men get an automatic vote of confidence from the start, women have to prove themselves, again and again. Women’s mistakes are remembered forever; men’s are soon forgotten. Women’s successes are chalked up to luck, while men’s are attributed to skill. Objective rules are applied rigorously to women, but far more leniently to men. As a result, women have to “try twice as hard to get half as far.” So most get half as far.

–Double bind. Women in jobs that are both masculine and male–and nearly every high-status job is–often find they have to choose between being liked, but not respected, or respected, but not liked. Women who are hard-driving, don’t mince words, and know their own worth tend to be seen as having objective qualifications, but lacking social skills; they are disliked. Women who cheerfully play feminine roles (like leading the diversity initiative!) are seen as “nice,” but as lacking the objective qualifications for leadership.

–Maternal wall. Motherhood triggers powerful negative competence and commitment assumptions. Indeed, the maternal wall is the strongest form of workplace gender bias. Mothers are 100% less likely to be promoted, and held to higher performance and punctuality standards than women with identical CVs, but no children. “I had a baby, not a lobotomy,” protested one lawyer, to no avail.

These stereotypes are automatic and pervasive. They will affect assignments, performance evaluations, and promotions–unless and until systems are put in place that effectively control for this bias. This requires the redesign of workplace systems, not a few meetings of a women’s initiative.

Gender wars. Gender bias against women creates conflicts among women. The clearest example is when women receive the message that there is room for only one, or a few, women at the top. Women then often end up undercutting each other, as each seeks to gain coveted, rare leadership positions.

Gender wars also occur between women who take traditionally feminine career paths and women who take traditionally masculine paths. These fights take many forms, but, in effect, they are gender bias against women, by women. Without careful thought, a women’s initiative can end up hurting women by exacerbating divisions among them.

None of this is easy. But the science shows what’s required if organizations are serious about moving women into leadership. Is yours? Now that science tells us what works, only real action will answer that question.